Skip to main content
Swap Used Books - Buy New Books at Great Prices!
How To Swap Books
Sign Up
Search 
Kiosk
All Books
PBS Market (New Books)
Book Browser
Advanced Search
Books Posted Today
Member Book Reviews
Award Winning Books
NYT Best Sellers
Amazon Best Sellers
Most Traveled Copies
Club Wish List
Login
Community
Discussion Forums
Book Lists
Donations
Box-O-Books
Maps
The Eclectic Pen
Fun Stuff
Top 100
Pulse of PBS
Spread The Word
Photo Gallery
Recipes
Club Tag Cloud
Member Testimonials
Help Center
Kiosk
PBS Market (New Books)
Go Shopping
Buy Credits
Buy PBS Money
Upgrade Membership
Gift Certificates
Transfer Credits
Search - List of Books by Hans-Ulrich Wehler
Hans-Ulrich Wehler (born September 11, 1931) is a left-wing German historian known for his "critical" studies of 19th century Germany. He was born in Freudenberg and was educated at the universities of Cologne and Bonn and at Ohio University between 1952—1958. He married Renate Pfitsch in 1958, by whom he has two children. Wehler taught at the University of Cologne (1968-70), at the Free University of Berlin (1970-71) and at Bielefeld University (1971-96).
Champion of the Sonderweg Theory more less
Wehler is one of the most famous members of the so-called Bielefeld School, a group of historians who used the methods of the social sciences to analyze history. Wehler's speciality is the Second Reich. He was one of the more famous proponents of the Sonderweg (Special Path) thesis that argues Germany in the 19th century had only a partial modernization. Wehler has argued that Germany was the only nation to be created in Western Europe through a military "revolution from above", which happened to occur at the same time that the agricultural revolution was fading while the Industrial Revolution was beginning in Central Europe. As a result, the economic sphere was modernized and the social sphere partially modernized. Politically, in Wehler's opinion the unified Germany retained values that were aristocratic and feudal, anti-democratic and pre-modern. In Wehler's view, it was the efforts of the reactionary German élite to retain power that led to the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, the failure of the Weimar Republic and the coming of the Third Reich. Wehler has asserted that the effects of the traditional power elite to maintain power up to 1945 "and in many respects even beyond that" took the form of:
Wehler has argued that the aggressive foreign policies of the German Empire, especially under Kaiser Wilhelm II, were largely part of an effort on the part of the government to distract the German people from the lack of democracy in their country. This ("primacy of domestic politics") argument to explain foreign policy, for which Wehler owes much to the work of Eckart Kehr, puts him against the traditional ("primacy of foreign politics") thesis championed by historians such as Gerhard Ritter, Klaus Hildebrand, Andreas Hillgruber, and Ludwig Dehio. Wehler is an advocate of the concept of social imperialism, which he has defined as "the diversions outwards of internal tensions and forces of change in order to preserve the social and political status quo", and as a "defensive ideology" to counter the "disruptive effects of industrialization on the social and economic structure of Germany" In Wehler's opinion, social imperialism was a device that allowed the German government to distract public attention from domestic problems and preserve the existing social and political order Wehler argued the dominant elites used social imperialism as the glue to hold together a fractured society and to maintain popular support for the social status quo Wehler argued German colonial policy in the 1880s was the first example of social imperialism in action, and was followed up by the "Tirpitz plan" for expanding the German Navy starting in 1897 In this point of view, groups such as the Colonial Society and the Navy League are seen as instruments for the government to mobilize public support The demands for annexing most of Europe and Africa in World War I are seen by Wehler as the pinnacle of social imperialism
In the 1970s, Wehler was involved in a somewhat discordant and acrimonious debate with Hildebrand and Hillgruber over the merits of the two approaches to diplomatic history. Hillgruber and Hildebrand argued for the traditional Primat der Aussenpolitik approach with empirical research on the foreign-policy making elite while Wehler argued for the Primat der Innenpolitik approach by treating diplomatic history as a sub-branch of social history with the focus on theoretical research. The two major intellectual influences Wehler cites are Karl Marx and Max Weber
"a penchant for authoritarian politics; a hostility toward democracy in the educational and party system; the influence of preindustrial leadership groups, values and ideas; the tenacity of the German state ideology; the myth of the bureaucracy; the superimposition of caste tendencies and class distinctions; and the manipulation of political antisemitism".Wehler has in particular been critical of what calls Otto von Bismarck's strategy of “negative integration” in which Bismarck sought to create a sense of Deutschtum (Germanism) and consolidate his power by subjecting various minority groups such as Roman Catholics, Alsatians, Poles, and Social Democrats to discriminatory laws. Wehler is one of the foremost advocates of the “Berlin War Party” historical school, which assigns the sole and exclusive responsibility for World War I to the German government.
Wehler has argued that the aggressive foreign policies of the German Empire, especially under Kaiser Wilhelm II, were largely part of an effort on the part of the government to distract the German people from the lack of democracy in their country. This ("primacy of domestic politics") argument to explain foreign policy, for which Wehler owes much to the work of Eckart Kehr, puts him against the traditional ("primacy of foreign politics") thesis championed by historians such as Gerhard Ritter, Klaus Hildebrand, Andreas Hillgruber, and Ludwig Dehio. Wehler is an advocate of the concept of social imperialism, which he has defined as "the diversions outwards of internal tensions and forces of change in order to preserve the social and political status quo", and as a "defensive ideology" to counter the "disruptive effects of industrialization on the social and economic structure of Germany" In Wehler's opinion, social imperialism was a device that allowed the German government to distract public attention from domestic problems and preserve the existing social and political order Wehler argued the dominant elites used social imperialism as the glue to hold together a fractured society and to maintain popular support for the social status quo Wehler argued German colonial policy in the 1880s was the first example of social imperialism in action, and was followed up by the "Tirpitz plan" for expanding the German Navy starting in 1897 In this point of view, groups such as the Colonial Society and the Navy League are seen as instruments for the government to mobilize public support The demands for annexing most of Europe and Africa in World War I are seen by Wehler as the pinnacle of social imperialism
In the 1970s, Wehler was involved in a somewhat discordant and acrimonious debate with Hildebrand and Hillgruber over the merits of the two approaches to diplomatic history. Hillgruber and Hildebrand argued for the traditional Primat der Aussenpolitik approach with empirical research on the foreign-policy making elite while Wehler argued for the Primat der Innenpolitik approach by treating diplomatic history as a sub-branch of social history with the focus on theoretical research. The two major intellectual influences Wehler cites are Karl Marx and Max Weber
Philosophy of History more less
Wehler has often criticized traditional German historiography with its emphasis on political events, the role of the individual in history and history as an art as unacceptably conservative and incapable of properly explaining the past. In a 1980 article, Wehler mocked those who sought to explain Nazi Germany as due to some defect in Adolf Hitler's personality by commenting:
"Does our understanding of National Socialist policies really depend on whether Hitler had only one testicle?...Perhaps the Führer had three, which made things difficult for him-who knows?...Even if Hitler could be regarded irrefutably as a sado-masochist, which scientific interest does that further?...Does the "Final Solution of the Jewish Question" thus become more easily understandable or the "twisted road to Auschwitz" become the one-way street of a psychopath in power?".Wehler sees history as a social science and contends that social developments are frequently more important than politics. In his view, history is a "critical social science" that must examine both the "temporal structures" of a society and encourage a "freer critical awareness of society". Wehler has advocated an approach he calls Historische Sozialwissenschaft (Historical Social Science), which favors integrating elements of history, sociology, economics and anthropology to study in a holistic fashion long-term social changes in a society In Wehler's view, Germany between 1871—1945 was dominated by a social structure which retarded modernization in some areas while allowing it in others. For Wehler, Germany's defeat in 1945 finally smashed the "pre-modern" social structure and let Germany become a normal 'Western' country.
The Historikerstreit and Other Controversies more less
Wehler is a leading critic of what he sees as efforts on the part of conservative historians to whitewash the German past. He played an important part in the Historikerstreit (historians' dispute) of the 1980s. The debate began after the publishing of an article by the philosopher Ernst Nolte in the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung on June 6 of 1986. In his article, Nolte claims that there was a connection by cause between the Gulag and the Nazi extermination camps, the previous supposedly having effected the latter, which he called an überschießende Reaktion ("overshooting reaction"). This infuriated many (and mainly left wing) intellectuals, among them Wehler and the philosopher Jürgen Habermas. They strongly rejected Nolte's thesis and presented a case for seeing the crimes of Nazi Germany as uniquely evil (something which in the view of Nolte's defenders, Nolte never disputed in the first place). Wehler was ferocious in his criticism of Nolte and wrote several articles and books that by Wehler’s own admission were polemical attacks on Nolte. In his 1988 book about the Historikerstreit entitled Entsorgung der deutschen Vergangenheit?: ein polemischer Essay zum "Historikerstreit" (Exoneration of the German Past?: A Polemical Essay about the 'Historikerstreit'), in which Wehler criticized every aspect of Nolte's views, and in which Wehler called the Historikerstreit a "political struggle" for the historical understanding of the German past between "a cartel devoted to repressing and excusing" the memory of the Nazi years, of which Nolte was the chief member, against "the representatives of a liberal-democratic politics, of an enlightened, self-critical position, of a rationality which is critical of ideology". Besides for Nolte, Wehler also attacked the work of Michael Stürmer as “a strident declaration of war against a key element of the consensus upon which the socio-political life of this second republic has rested heretofore" During the Historikerstreit, Wehler was one of the few historians who endorsed Jürgen Habermas method of attacking Andreas Hillgruber by creating a sentence about “tested senior officials in Nazi Party in the East” out of a long sentence in which Hillgruber had said no such thing under the grounds that right-wing historians like Hillgruber deserved any and all forms of abuse. The British historian Richard J. Evans, who was normally a fierce critic of Hillgruber felt that Habermas and Wehler went too far in attacking Hillgruber with the line about "tested senior officials".
In another essay during the Historikerstreit, Wehler wrote of Nolte and Hillgruber's that:
In Entsorgung der deutschen Vergangenheit?, Wehler writing not only of the work of Nolte, but also of the work and intentionist theories about the Holocaust of Klaus Hildebrand, Andreas Hillgruber, Joachim Fest and Michael Stürmer, declared:
Speaking of the political importance of the Historikerstreit, Wehler described the debate as "The Historikerstreit is, in sum, more than a strictly scholarly controversy within scholarly limits". In a 1989 essay, the American historian Jerry Muller criticized Wehler as a "leading Left-Liberal historian" who used the Historikerstreit to unjustly smear neo-conservatives with the Nazi tag Muller went on to write of the "interesting peculiarity of the political culture of German Left-liberal intellectuals" such as Wehler, in that Wehler referred to repression in the Stalin-era Soviet Union as "the excesses of the Russian Civil War", and argued that there was no comparison between Soviet and German history. Instead Wehler suggested that the only valid comparisons were between German history and those of other Western nations. Muller criticized Wehler for his lack of interest in Soviet history, and unwillingness to engage in a comparative history between Eastern and Western nations, instead of just Western nations.
Along somewhat similar lines to the stance he took during the Historikerstreit, in September 1990 Wehler strongly condemned a newspaper opinion piece by Harold James which suggested national legends and myths were needed to sustain national identity.
In another essay during the Historikerstreit, Wehler wrote of Nolte and Hillgruber's that:
"Hitler supposedly believed in the reality of this danger [of Communism threatening Germany]. Moreover, his dread of being overwhelmed by the "Asiatic" Bolsheviks was allegedly the prime motivating force behind his policies and personality. Nolte restated his axiom-one which perhaps reflects the naiveté of an historian who has devoted his life's work to the power of ideologies-in a blunter, more pointed form than ever before in the fall of 1987: "To view Hitler as a German politician rather the anti-Lenin", he reproved hundreds of knowledgeable historians, "strikes me as a proof of a regrettable myopia and narrowness". Starting from his premise, and falling under the sway of the very fears and phobias he himself has played up, Nolte once again defiantly insisted: "If Hitler was a person fundamentally driven by fears-by among others a fear of the "rat cage"-and if this renders "his motivations more understandable", then the war against the Soviet Union was not only "the greatest war ever of destruction and enslavement", but also "in spite of this, objectively speaking [!], a preemptive war.While Nolte may like to describe his motive as the purely scientific interest of (as he likes to put it) a solitary thinker in search of a supposedly more complex, more accurate understanding of the years between 1917 and 1945, a number of political implications are clearly present. The basic tendency of Nolte's reinterpretation is to unburden German history by relativizing the Holocaust. Nolte claims the Nazi mass murder was modeled on and instigated by the excesses of the Russian Revolution, the Stalinist regime and the Gulag; that it countered this "Asiatic" danger by imitating and surpassing it. This new localization of "absolute evil" in Nolte's political theology leads away from Hitler, National Socialism and German history. It shifts the real origins of fascist barbarism onto the Marxist postulate-and the Bolshevik practice-of extermination. Once again the classic mechanism of locating the source of evil outside one's own history is at work. The German war of destruction certainly remains inhuman. But because its roots supposedly lie in the Marxist theory and Bolshevik class warfare, the German perpetrator is now seen to be reacting in defensive, understandable panic to the "original" inhumanity of the East. From there, it is only one more step to the astounding conclusion that Hitler's invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941 and the war of conquest and extermination that followed were "objectively speaking"-one can hardly believe one's eyes-"a preemptive war...An even closer connection between academic and political interests is apparent in Andreas Hillgruber's Zweierlei Untergang, where the plight of the German Army on the Eastern Front and the civilian population of eastern Germany is treated without any countervailing consideration for the fate of the Jewish and Slavic "subhumans", the members of the German opposition, and incarcerated groups, or indeed for the Europeans subject to German occupation, and the German people themselves, all caught up in a senselessly prolonged "total war". Such a position unavoidably carries immensely oppressive political implications. His laments over the destruction of the "European center", Germany's intermediary position between East and West, and her loss of great power status is shot through with countless political value judgments. His guiding position (later admitted openly), according to which the loss of the eastern provinces and the expulsion of the German population westward represented "probably the most burdensome consequence of the war", is in itself a matter for political discussion.Such political implications can only lead us down the wrong path-not to mention a scientific dead-end. In all likelihood it was Hillgruber's aversion to methodological and theoretical reflection that was largely responsible for this wrong turn. Be that as it may, the political effect of Zweierlei Untergang has been downright fatal. It has led to the return of an unreflecting nationalism, in which sympathetic identification with the German Army on the Eastern Front and with the German civilian population has become dogma. Such a worldview has led an otherwise extremely knowledgeable historian to extrude and exclude the victims of National Socialism from his narrative, an omission that would once have been unimaginable but that we now see in black and white. The consequences of a naive attempt to identify with the subjects of historical writing could hardly be demonstrated more drastically"
In Entsorgung der deutschen Vergangenheit?, Wehler writing not only of the work of Nolte, but also of the work and intentionist theories about the Holocaust of Klaus Hildebrand, Andreas Hillgruber, Joachim Fest and Michael Stürmer, declared:
"This survey is directed-among other matters-against the apologetic effect of the tendency of interpretations that once more blame Hitler alone for the 'Holocaust'-thereby exonerating the older power elites and the Army, the executive bureaucracy, and the judiciary ...and the silent majority who knew".The American historian John Lukacs writing of Entsorgung der deutschen Vergangenheit? in his 1997 book The Hitler of History noted that he was impressed by many of Wehler's points, but felt that he made them with an unnecessarily aggressive and polemical style.
Speaking of the political importance of the Historikerstreit, Wehler described the debate as "The Historikerstreit is, in sum, more than a strictly scholarly controversy within scholarly limits". In a 1989 essay, the American historian Jerry Muller criticized Wehler as a "leading Left-Liberal historian" who used the Historikerstreit to unjustly smear neo-conservatives with the Nazi tag Muller went on to write of the "interesting peculiarity of the political culture of German Left-liberal intellectuals" such as Wehler, in that Wehler referred to repression in the Stalin-era Soviet Union as "the excesses of the Russian Civil War", and argued that there was no comparison between Soviet and German history. Instead Wehler suggested that the only valid comparisons were between German history and those of other Western nations. Muller criticized Wehler for his lack of interest in Soviet history, and unwillingness to engage in a comparative history between Eastern and Western nations, instead of just Western nations.
Along somewhat similar lines to the stance he took during the Historikerstreit, in September 1990 Wehler strongly condemned a newspaper opinion piece by Harold James which suggested national legends and myths were needed to sustain national identity.
Criticism more less
Wehler's work has faced criticism. From the right, Otto Pflanze claimed that Wehler's use of such terms as "Bonapartism", "social imperialism" "negative integration" and Sammlungspolitik ("the politics of rallying together") has gone beyond mere heuristic devices and instead become a form of historical fiction. The German conservative historian Thomas Nipperdey has argued that Wehler presented German elites as more united then they were, focused too much on forces from above and not enough on forces from below in 19th century German society, and presented a too stark contrast between the forces of order and stabilization vs. the forces of democracy with no explanation for the relative stability of the Empire. In Nipperdey's opinion, Wehler's work fails to explain how the Weimar Republic occurred since according to Wehler prior to 1918 the forces of authoritarianism were so strong and the forces of democracy so weak. In a 1975 book review of Wehler's Das Deutsche Kaiserreich, Nipperdey concluded that a proper history of the Imperial period could only be written by placing German history in a comparative European and trans-Atlantic perspective, which might allow for "our fixation on the struggle with our great-grandfathers" to end.
From the left, Wehler has been criticized by two British Marxist historians, David Blackbourn and Geoff Eley who in their 1980 book Mythen deutscher Geschichtsschreibung (translated into English in 1984 as The Peculiarities of German History) rejected the entire concept of the Sonderweg as a flawed construct supported by a "a curious mixture of idealistic analysis and vulgar materialism" that led to an "exaggerated linear continuity between the nineteenth century and the 1930s". In the view of Blackbourn and Eley, there was no Sonderweg, and it is ahistorical to judge why Germany did not become Britain for the simple reason that Germany is Germany and Britain is Britain. Moreover, Eley and Blackbourn argued that after 1890 there was a tendency towards greater democratization in German society with the growth of civil society as reflected in the growth of trade unions and a more or less free press.
In addition, Eley contends that there are three flaws to Wehler's theory of social imperialism. The first is that Wehler credits leaders such as Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz and Prince Bernhard von Bülow with a greater degree of vision then what they in fact possessed The second is that many of the pressure groups on the right who advocated an imperialist policy for Germany were not the creations of the government, and in fact often demanded an far more aggressive policies then what the government was willing to undertake The third was that many of these imperialist lobbying groups demanded an policy of political and social reform at home, in addition to imperialism abroad Eley argued that what is required in thinking about social imperialism is a broader picture with an interaction from above and below, and a wider view of the relationship between imperialism abroad and domestic politics
From the left, Wehler has been criticized by two British Marxist historians, David Blackbourn and Geoff Eley who in their 1980 book Mythen deutscher Geschichtsschreibung (translated into English in 1984 as The Peculiarities of German History) rejected the entire concept of the Sonderweg as a flawed construct supported by a "a curious mixture of idealistic analysis and vulgar materialism" that led to an "exaggerated linear continuity between the nineteenth century and the 1930s". In the view of Blackbourn and Eley, there was no Sonderweg, and it is ahistorical to judge why Germany did not become Britain for the simple reason that Germany is Germany and Britain is Britain. Moreover, Eley and Blackbourn argued that after 1890 there was a tendency towards greater democratization in German society with the growth of civil society as reflected in the growth of trade unions and a more or less free press.
In addition, Eley contends that there are three flaws to Wehler's theory of social imperialism. The first is that Wehler credits leaders such as Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz and Prince Bernhard von Bülow with a greater degree of vision then what they in fact possessed The second is that many of the pressure groups on the right who advocated an imperialist policy for Germany were not the creations of the government, and in fact often demanded an far more aggressive policies then what the government was willing to undertake The third was that many of these imperialist lobbying groups demanded an policy of political and social reform at home, in addition to imperialism abroad Eley argued that what is required in thinking about social imperialism is a broader picture with an interaction from above and below, and a wider view of the relationship between imperialism abroad and domestic politics
Later Career more less
During the "Goldhagen Controversy" of 1996, Wehler was a leading critic of Daniel Goldhagen, especially in regards to the latter's claims in his book Hitler's Willing Executioners about alleged culture of murderous German "eliminationist anti-Semitism", through Wehler was more sympathetic towards Goldhagen's claims about the motives of Holocaust perpetrators. The Canadian historian Fred Kautz called Wehler an anti-Semitic for his attacks on Goldhagen Kautz wrote that "He [Wehler] doesnt' dare say it openly that he thinks Goldhagen is incapable of writing about the Holocaust because he is a Jew...It's flabbergasting what perverse ideas are dreamt up in the studies of German professors, where according to an ancient legend, one seeks the truth unperturbed, "sine ira et studio" ("with diligence and without anger"): the victims of history should not be allowed to write their own history!"
In 2000, Wehler became the eighth German historian to be inducted as an honorary member of the American Historical Association. Wehler accepted this honor with some reluctance as previous German historians so honored have included Leopold von Ranke, Gerhard Ritter and Friedrich Meinecke, none of whom Wehler considers to be proper historians.
In a 2006 interview, Wehler supported imprisonment of David Irving for Holocaust Denial in Austria under the grounds that “The denial of such an unimaginable murder of millions, one third of whom were children under the age of 14, cannot simply be accepted as something protected by the freedom of speech”. In recent years, Wehler has been a leading critic of Turkey's possible accession to the European Union.
In 2000, Wehler became the eighth German historian to be inducted as an honorary member of the American Historical Association. Wehler accepted this honor with some reluctance as previous German historians so honored have included Leopold von Ranke, Gerhard Ritter and Friedrich Meinecke, none of whom Wehler considers to be proper historians.
In a 2006 interview, Wehler supported imprisonment of David Irving for Holocaust Denial in Austria under the grounds that “The denial of such an unimaginable murder of millions, one third of whom were children under the age of 14, cannot simply be accepted as something protected by the freedom of speech”. In recent years, Wehler has been a leading critic of Turkey's possible accession to the European Union.
Work more less
- Bismarck und der Imperialismus, 1969.
- "Bismarck's Imperialism 1862-1890" pages 119-155 from Past and Present, No. 48, August 1970.
- "Industrial Growth and Early German Imperialism" from Studies in the Theory of Imperialism edited by Roger Owen and Bob Sutcliffe, London: Longman, 1972
- Das Deutsche Kaiserreich, 1871-1918, 1973; translated from the German by Kim Traynor as The German Empire, 1871-1918, Leamington Spa : Berg Publishers, 1985, ISBN 0907582222.
- Geschichte als historische Sozialwissenschaft, 1973.
- Krisenherde des Kaiserreichs, 1871-1918, 1973.
- Modernisierungstheorie und Geschichte, 1975.
- Historische Sozialwissenschaft und Geschichtsschreibung, 1980.
- ""Deutscher Sonderweg" oder allgemeine Probleme des westlichen Kapitalismus" pages 478-487 from Merkur, Volume 5, 1981.
- "Historiography in Germany Today" from Observations on "The Spiritual Situation of the Age": Contemporary German Perspectives, edited by Jürgen Habermas, 1984.
- Preussen ist wieder chic: Politik und Polemik in zwanzig Essays, 1985.
- Deutsche Gesellschaftsgeschichte, vol. 1-5, 1987-2008.
- Entsorgung der deutschen Vergangenheit: ein polemischer Essay zum "Historikerstreit", 1988.
- "Unburdening the German Past? A Preliminary Assessment" pages 214-223 from Reworking The Past : Hitler, the Holocaust, and the Historians' Debate edited by Peter Baldwin, Boston : Beacon Press, 1990, ISBN 0807043028.
- Nationalismus und Nationalstaat: Studien zum nationalen Problem im modernen Europa, co-edited with Otto Dann and Theodor Schieder, 1991.
- Die Gegenwart als Geschichte, 1995.
- "The Goldhagen Controversy: Agonising Problems, Scholarly Failure, and the Political Dimension" pages 80—91 from German History, Volume 15, 1997.
This author page uses material from the Wikipedia article "Hans-Ulrich Wehler", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0
Total Books: 43
By using this Web site, you confirm that you have read, understood, and agreed to be bound by the Terms of Use. As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.
US Patent Number 7,877,315 | Copyright © 2004 - 2025 PaperBackSwap.com. All Rights Reserved.
US Patent Number 7,877,315 | Copyright © 2004 - 2025 PaperBackSwap.com. All Rights Reserved.
Loading...
Thank you for your patience